


resting pulse

by cafecliche



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Anxiety, Developing Relationship, Gen, M/M, Mutual Pining, Set between episodes 4 and 5, aka that one summer they fell excruciatingly in love and neither of them knew how to deal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-17
Updated: 2017-03-17
Packaged: 2018-10-06 20:06:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,216
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10343631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cafecliche/pseuds/cafecliche
Summary: For something all in his head, it can be brutally physical when it wants to be. But he’s an athlete - he knows how to listen to his body, categorize and interpret its signals. It doesn’t really follow that the smallest twinge in his knee could mean a very bad season at the same time full-blown palpitations mean it’s a day that ends in Y. But bodies are weird.Victor, though. Victor is a stress test brought to life.(Or: a story in heartbeats.)





	

**Author's Note:**

> A little Tumblr fic for the lovely kevystel, based on this: kevystel.tumblr.com/post/158150646625/fic-title-the-sound-of-ur-heart
> 
> Also brief warning, while there's nothing too intense, this story does depict some physical symptoms of anxiety!

“You should go,” Yuuri says.

Victor doesn’t so much as look up from the Japanese textbook spread across his lap. “Hm?”

“Your yukata will go to waste,” Yuuri says. It’s a _really_ nice yukata. Red, with silver dragonflies. It would be a crime to deprive the community of Victor Nikiforov in that yukata.

“Didn’t you say there would be more festivals?” Victor frowns as he traces the practice sentence. “Besides, I’m learning causative verbs.”

 So it’s a stalemate. Again. They’re good at those.

Victor’s favorite thing about Japanese – at least, his most recent favorite thing – is that trailing off is a perfectly acceptable way to end a sentence. せっかく日本に来たのに…  Victor knows enough Japanese to understand the bones: the _you came all this way to Japan, but_ … but even Yuuri doesn’t know how to translate that ellipsis. 

But _instead of eating street taiyaki and winning goldfish here you are, watching me attempt to become one with the floor?_ But _I have mastered the art of turning the quad sal into a near-death experience?_ Both are correct. Neither, he gets the feeling, would go over very well.

“You should go have fun,” Yuuri says.

“I’m having fun,” Victor says, brightly but definitively.  He leans back against the wall. They’re almost shoulder to shoulder now - there’s a space at Victor’s side just wide enough to slide into, should Yuuri want to close the distance.

“Can I get you anything?” Victor says. “Water? Some dinner? I think there’s stir-fry left.”

Yuuri wants two things: his dignity, wherever it went, and a new right extensor tendon. Neither are readily available in the kitchen.

For lack of a better deflection, he reaches down to adjust the ice pack to the other side of his ankle. His foot twitches once, involuntarily, upward. 

Three things happen in very quick succession:

Yuuri fails to bite back the hiss of pain.

Victor, wide eyed, grabs his hand.

And Yuuri grips back hard enough to turn both their knuckles white. It takes a good five seconds for his brain to catch up with his fingertips. It takes another ten or so for them to break eye contact long enough to figure out what their limbs just did without their express permission.

“Sorry,” Yuuri laughs - tries to laugh. There’s a thudding in his ears, so it’s anyone’s guess how successful he is. 

His grip goes slack. Victor’s merely shifts downwards, his mouth slanting downward. The quick, breathless beat of Yuuri’s pulse feels magnified under the pressure of Victor’s fingers.

“I’ll get you more ice,” Victor says eventually.

“Ice is good,” Yuuri blurts out to Victor’s retreating back. 

He does not need ice. He has perfectly good ice right here. He does, however, need a moment to press his insides back into their proper place. And any opening is a good one.

***

Yuuri Katsuki is the picture of cardiovascular health. He has any number of pre- and post-competition physicals, plus one particularly fraught emergency room EKG in the middle of sophomore year, to tell him so. 

These days, he is consistently about 98% sure that his heart isn’t going to burst, Alien-style, through his ribcage, which he considers marked improvement. 

(“Yuuri,” Phichit hissed when he put it like that once, “ _holy shit_.”)

For something all in his head, it can be brutally physical when it wants to be. But he’s an athlete - he knows how to listen to his body, categorize and interpret its signals. It doesn’t really follow that the smallest twinge in his knee could mean a very bad season at the same time full-blown palpitations mean it’s a day that ends in Y. But bodies are weird.

Victor, though. Victor is a stress test brought to life. 

This is how Yuuri dies, probably: on the floor of Minako’s studio, pressed into a truly impossible hip stretch, willingly recounting his excruciating first ISU banquet for no other reason than the fact that Victor has a really nice laugh.

“So?” Yuuri can feel Victor’s hands against his back, straining to keep steady through his laughter.  Yuuri stretches deeper through an exhale.

“If you’re asking if I mauled a representative from Mizuno to get the last kebab, the answer is no. Barely.”

Victor snorts when he laughs this hard. Yuuri has a sudden flash of that excruciating first banquet, fantasizing that Victor Nikiforov would show up unexpectedly, and praise his step sequence, and maybe bring cheeseburgers. And look at him now.

It’s - a lot.

The pressure at his back lessens. “Yuuri. You’re holding your breath. Too far?”  _  
_

_Way too far_. He’s talking about the stretch, though. Which, to be fair, is a little too far, too.

What he says out loud is, “I can go further.”

There’s some kind of choking sound behind him. Later, he’s fairly sure he imagined it.

***

There is a big, gaping hole where Yuuri used to keep his sense of shame, and it’s shaped like Victor’s bed. Victor bought his own mattress for his stay in Hasetsu, a pillow-top king size. It’s massive. Yuuri is going to live and die on this mattress.

That last thought was, apparently, out loud, because Victor looks down at him and raises an eyebrow. “I don’t think they’d let you take it on the ice.”

This must be what an out-of-body experience is like. He should sit up and salvage what’s left of his brain-to-mouth filter, and yet.

“Keep going,” Yuuri says, letting his eyes drift shut. “I’m listening.”

There’s a shuffling of paper, like Victor’s shifting his notes pointedly. “I sense this choreography session derailing.”

“No, no,” Yuuri says through a massive yawn. “Shove me if you have a question. I’ll wake up.”

He does not wake up to a shove. He wakes up to the clock shifted three hours ahead, the lights still on, and a Russian skating legend sprawled across his lower half, his head pillowed on Yuuri’s sternum.

It can’t be that comfortable. Then again, 70 kilograms of pure muscle pinning him down in the height of summer shouldn’t be very comfortable, either.

Victor shifts, mumbles, “You okay?”

“Hm?” says Yuuri, suddenly very awake.

Victor raises a hand to Yuuri’s chest and taps, once.  He might not have noticed, otherwise. From this position, he can feel Victor’s soft, steady heartbeat better than his own.

“… oh. That?” He takes a breath and sinks, like he can slide out of his own rhythm and into Victor’s. “Ignore that.”

***

There should not, overall, be a great deal of difference between a failed jump and a successful one, physiologically. Besides, of course, impact.

And yet failed jump feels like acid must taste. A successful jump, right now, feels like being swung around and around through the air. 

Yuuri, for his part, latches his arms around Victor’s neck, kicks his skates as far back as possible, and tries not to kill anyone.

“HEY!” Yuuko bellows from the direction of the locker rooms. “SAFETY!”

Momentum keeps them spinning when Victor sets him down.

“That…” even he sound breathless, “was perfect. Let’s end with that today.”

That weightless, whirling feeling lasts even as they slow into a drift. The chill of the rink feels like shards with every inhale. The blood is pounding from his ears to fingertips. Yuuri could easily be done.

“Let’s go again,” he says.

They go again.


End file.
